The Purification Ceremony (3 page)

    “Trying to call home for the kids,” I apologized. “First time I’ve been away from them for a holiday.”

    “Kids, huh?” He chuckled. “I’m checking in one last time with my broker before we head out. Can’t believe they won’t let you call out ‘cept in an emergency.”

    I shrugged. “I’m kind of looking forward to the solitude.”

    “Solitude?” He chuckled again. “Sure, I guess.”

    I moved by the man, ignoring the way that, despite the heavy coat I wore, he stared at my chest. I suppose I would have found it stranger if he didn’t, but I went off toward the dock, past the fly-fishing dories that had been pulled up on land for the winter.

    There, the pilot broke off a conversation with a woman perhaps five years younger than I. The pilot got inside the plane. The woman turned and gave me a look of appraisal. I gave her one in return. She could have been called glamorous, but for the hardening influences of an oilskin drover coat, a cowboy hat, an overly precise makeup job and an indifferent expression. She balanced the weight of one leg on the heel of a black, hand-tooled boot and raised her right hand to brush back hair dyed the hue of dried goldenrod. A chunky gold bracelet dangled from her wrist. A four carat diamond glittered on her left hand. She gestured with the diamond toward the phone booth.

    “He figure out whether you’re traveling alone yet?” she asked in that same South Texas drawl.

    “Excuse me?”

    “Earl,” she said. Her gaze did not waver from the phone booth. “He likes to hunt women as much as deer. I’m his latest trophy wife, Lenore.”

    “Look, Lenore, he said he was calling his stockbroker. I was calling my children.”

    Lenore seemed to think that was funny. “Stockbroker? More likely his secretary or the gal that does his fingernails.” She gave me a closer look. “You got looks, honey, but I figure you’re a bit too easy for Earl. He likes his game tough to handle.”

    “What are you — his wife or his bedroom guide?”

    At that, Lenore leaned back and laughed. She pointed at me. “You’re all right, honey! I come on a little strong, I know. But it helps me tell what people are made of. I can see you’re tougher than I thought. No hard feelings?”

    She stuck out her hand. I admit she had me confused now. But I could see she genuinely meant the apology. I took her bony hand and shook it. Earl called out behind her. “See you two huntresses have met. Didn’t catch your name?”

    “Diana, Diana Jackman.”

    “Earl Addison. Addison Data Systems, Forth Worth.”

    That was where I knew him from. “Your company’s getting lots of press in the trades these days, Earl.”

    “Yeah, you in the computer bus — ?”

    Before Earl could finish, another man’s voice called out: “Jackman? You’re not Hart Jackman’s daughter, are you?”

    I froze at the mention of my father’s name, then forced myself to turn.

    Within the cluster of duffels and weapons cases stood someone seen in pictures on the walls of my father’s office, a man of about fifty-five or sixty with a startling white beard and a tangle of equally chalky hair that ran off his head in thirty directions. He wore a green camouflage vest, jeans and heavy leather boots. His skin was mottled red, the kind of skin you see on open-water fishermen. His eyes were rheumy, but intelligent.

    Then the name came to me — Michael Griffin. He owned a store outside Nashville from which he dealt fine shotguns: J. Purdey & Sons, Holland & Holland, A.H. Foxes. But when it came to big game, if I remembered, he hunted strictly with the bow and arrow. He was also a writer who had made a name for himself discussing the more philosophical aspects of the hunt, a trait which had endeared him to my dad.

    “Yes, Mr. Griffin, I was Hart’s daughter.”

    He got around the equipment and thrust out his hand.

    “Then you are Little Crow.”

    I smiled. “No one’s called me that in years. Please call me Diana.”

    He smiled in return. “Only if you’ll call me Griff.”

    “All right, Griff.”

    He turned to Earl and Lenore. “Could I have a minute with Diana here? She lost her dad a little while back. I’d like to make my condolences.”

    Earl’s jaw flapped in annoyance. He was the sort who didn’t like to be told what to do. “Sorry, Diana,” he said finally, “uh… cancer or something?”

    “No, Earl,” I said softly. “Much worse”

    “Oh,” Earl said.

    “You toad!” Lenore said, grabbing him by the shoulder. She thrust her chin at me. “I apologize. Earl’s a genius with computers and business, but his people skills leave something to be desired. Come on.”

    When the two of them were out of earshot, I said, “I hope Metcalfe’s as big as they say it is.”

    “Thirty-three miles by thirty-three miles,” Griff replied.

    “Sounds a little small,” I said, gesturing in their direction.

    “We’ll make the best of it,” Griff said. His expression turned sober. “It’s real nice to meet you. Your dad used to say that, besides himself, you were the best tracker he ever saw.”

    “It’s been a long time. I’m way out of shape for the woods.”

    “Shape! Young lady, you look like you could run twenty miles.”

    “That’s gym shape,” I said. “I haven’t been in the big woods in eighteen years. I’ve been sitting behind a desk, writing software — waste management, pollution control, that sort of thing. You might say I’ve been living as far away from nature as a person can.”

    Then this will be a good place to reintroduce yourself,” Griff said. “Isolated country, spirit country, your dad’s kind of country.”

    I found myself looking at the ground.

    The pilot called out to us then. The chatter on the dock died, replaced by an awkward entry as we all tried to board the pitching plane. Inside the Otter, I took a seat mid-cabin. Besides Griff and the Addisons, there were three men in their mid-thirties chatting familiarly. And then another guy in his late twenties, overly lean, almost sallow, with curly red hair and a mustache. He took the seat opposite mine. There was something strange about him. I studied him out of the corner of my eye until I figured it out. Everything he wore, from the pile jacket to the wool pants to the pacstyle boots, was brand new. Not that I hadn’t bought new equipment for this trip. But everything?

    He caught me looking and smiled. It was a confident, attractive smile. He said, “More women than I expected on a trip like this.”

    “I guess,” I said.

    “Just that you don’t expect to see women going on a wilderness hunt.”

    “I started hunting when I was five,” I said, crossing my arms. “And there are more women in the field every year. Threatened?”

    “Just intrigued,” he said. He held out his hand. “Steve Kurant.”

    “Diana Jackman.”

    Kurant craned his head around. “Your husband?”

    “Not along,” I said. “Doesn’t believe in it.”

    He smiled that smile again. “Really? Now that’s an interesting twist — ”

    The twin engines belched, interrupting him. They wheezed, then thundered to life, sending a vibration down the plane’s interior. The pilot’s voice came from an overhead speaker: “Weather Canada has issued a storm warning for early this evening, so the turbulence could be rough. In fact, weather’s gonna be nasty off and on the next ten days. Keep to your seats and your belts fastened. I’ll try to make this as painless as I can.”

    A row behind me, Arnie Taylor, who turned out to be a pediatrician from eastern Pennsylvania, shook his head and grabbed the arms of his seat. He gritted his teeth and stared across the aisle at his friend Phil Nunn, a muscular black man with a shaved head, thick brow ridges and skin so scarred by acne that it looked sand-blasted. Nunn owned a string of auto-parts stores.

    “I hate this kind of stuff, Phil,” Arnie said. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.”

    “What’s your problem, Doc?” Phil snapped. “I been listenin’ to you whine since we left Philly. We’ll be up and down in forty minutes, tops.”

    Arnie reddened. The man next to him looked like a hippie. Sal “Butch” Daloia had long brown hair, a full beard and pouty lips perpetually twisted in amusement. He sold expensive music recording equipment for a living. He said, “Lighten up, Phil. You know Arnie hates to fly.”

    “Well, what’s he want, Butch, a frigging limo to the wilderness?”

    “Horses,” Arnie complained. “You said go out West to hunt, I figured horses.” a dismissive gesture. “We’da gotten to the trail and heard you bitching about being allergic to ponies. You been like this since we was kids, Arnie, always complaining about being sick. I been thinkin’ lately that’s why you became a doctor, so you could figure out new stuff to be bitching about.”

    Arnie chewed on the inside of his cheek, but didn’t reply.

    Butch said, “And what about you, Phil? I think you became a grease monkey just so you could keep that pimpish old Cadillac of yours on the road.”

    The black man laughed. “I admit I got a certain style, Butchy-boy, but c’mon — pimpish? You can do better’n that old stereotype.”

    Arnie said, “That was a little lame.”

    Butch shrugged. “He takes the fuzzy dice off his rearview mirror, I’ll take it back.”

    “Uh-uh, me and those dice go way back,” Phil said, holding up crossed fingers. “Had ‘em in my first Caddy before I opened the shop. I’ll have ‘em in my last.”

    Butch reached inside his jacket and drew out a silver flask. He took a swig, then motioned to Arnie. “This’11 help. I’m in these damned short-hoppers all the time and it’s the only way to deal with them.”

    Arnie attempted a smile. “I’ll be okay.”

    “Think of it as a toast,” Butch insisted, shaking his long hair from his eyes. “Then do what I’m gonna do — dream about what’s waiting for us inside Metcalfe’s tomorrow morning.”

    The pediatrician took the flask, sipped the liquid and shuddered.

    I shuddered with him, thinking of the dream I’d had the night before. In it, I had been cooking in my father’s hunting cabin in the shadow of Mt. Katahdin in northern Maine. I carried a bowl of water from the sink to the oven and tripped, falling facedown on the floor of the cabin. The spilled water turned to blood and soaked the white clothes I wore. I had awakened sweating and shaking from the vision. In the world I was raised in, blood dreams foretell violent death.

    The plane came free of the dock. The lake roiled now, gray and ominous with the approaching storm. We headed into the oncoming waves for several minutes, gained speed finally, bumped twice, then rose. The first wisps of cloud caressed the ridge tops. Snowflakes fell.

    Around me, the talk was of the hunt to come. I tuned it out and looked down, trying to identify the various trees by their crowns: Red pine, poplar and, in the wetland bottoms, ash and willow. Where the leaves had fallen I could make out the faint lines of game trails and my eyes became hazy, closed, then opened and shut again as I thought of being in the big woods again, slipping quietly after a deer, after a memory.

    It was the day after Thanksgiving, almost two years prior to the flight. I was home at our town house in Boston’s Back Bay, preparing leftover turkey sandwiches for my kids. Though I had willed myself over the years to rarely think of my father, when I did, it was of the eventuality of his passing and how I’d react. I used to tell myself that the time apart would lesson its significance. But, as is often the case, the stories we tell ourselves disintegrate under the hammer of reality.

    “This Diana Jackman?” the man with the Down East accent asked.

    “Yes.”

    “Been hard to find you. Got bad news. Your father’s passed on. Been dead two days up in the woods there nor’ east a Baxter Park. Hunters found him laying next to a giant twelve-pointer. Biggest deer I’ve seen in years. The boys drug it in to show everybody.”

    I had already faded into the shadow world that comes after someone you know dies. “Heart attack?” I asked.”No, ma’am, sorry to say, but appears a suicide,” he said. “And, sorrier still, but the coyotes been at him. We need you to identify the body.”

    I summoned all my strength, got directions and hung up. Kevin looked up at me from the kitchen table, where he was trying to get Emily, my younger child, to stop playing with her sandwich. He still had the lank blond hair I remembered from college. He still had that long, slender body that begged for fashionable clothes.

    “I have to go to Maine,” I said.

    The shock must have shown in my face, because Kevin got up fast and walked toward me. “Why? Did someone die?”

    I answered without thinking. “My… my father.”

    “Your father?” His bewilderment was total. “I thought your father died years ago. Diana?”

    The room around me whirled, but I managed to make it stop. “He did die years ago. At least to me. And that’s what counted.”

    Now Kevin’s angular face twisted from puzzlement to anger. “You’ve lied about this all these years?”

    “Mommy lied!” Emily yelled from the table. “She doesn’t get her allowance.”

    “Shut up, Em!” said Patrick, my firstborn, and the worrier in the family. He could see how off balance I was.

    “Diana, why would you do this?” Kevin demanded.

    The room whirled again and I stuttered. “I don’t know. I have to go to Maine.”

    “I’m coming, too,” he said. “I’ll call my mother. She’ll baby-sit.”

    I shook my head. “You never knew him and neither did the kids. I’d like to keep it that way. I’ll explain when I get back.”

    You’ll be surprised to hear that my father was a doctor, a good one, which in some ways, makes our story all the more tragic. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Suffice it to say, he knew where the vital organs lay. And I believe he knew I’d be the one to come to identify him. Who else? I was his only child, the last of his line. I’m sure he put a bullet through his chest to do the job correctly, and yet to lesson the impact a head wound would have had on me.